Bakhtiyaris: it's all over

Page Tools

It was an elaborate security operation, carefully planned and
carried out with military precision. Around 7am yesterday about 20
officers from immigration and Global Solutions Limited, a private
company that runs immigration detention centres, forced their way
into the villa.

Roqia Bakhtiyari and her daughter were making sandwiches. Like
many other families, they were planning to enjoy the hot weather
with a swim and a picnic.

The Sunday Age has been told officers swarmed through
the villa rousing confused and frightened children. The family was
"extracted" from its Adelaide home to the Port Augusta Residential
Housing Project. The children were prevented from collecting their
belongings. Strangers did that later.

Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone said there were compelling
reasons to detain the family. But it appeared to be the first step
in deporting them and their father, Ali, who is in the Baxter
detention centre, to Pakistan.

There are no more legal avenues to explore, no more appeals to
be made. The Bakhtiyaris had come to the end of their stay in
Australia. Senator Vanstone declined to comment on whether they
would be deported, but her options under the Immigration Act are
limited and the Pakistan Government has indicated it will accept
them as nationals.

The family's tortuous journey through Australia's immigration
detention system has taken a grave emotional toll. Ali Bakhtiyari
spends his days living in a small unit at Baxter barely speaking.
Other detainees say he has become a recluse, barely knowing what
legal challenges have been made on his behalf, or what false claims
are being made in his name by activists purporting to support him.
His eldest son carries a scar on his arm spelling "freedom".

Years of detention have left some family members depressed and
suicidal. If Roqia is not coping with her six children, the reasons
should be obvious.

So who is to blame for the emotional destruction of the
Bakhtiyari family and the years spent in detention? Senator
Vanstone would mostly likely say it is the Bakhtiyaris themselves.
They could have always packed up and gone home to wherever that may
be - Pakistan or Afghanistan. They did not have to play the system;
they did not have to endure years of being locked up. The
Government has insisted, with good reason, that they are Pakistani.
But when it comes to sending people home, the Howard Government has
never been too fussy. It has flown plenty of asylum seekers back to
Afghanistan who have been judged by the courts and the Refugee
Review Tribunal to be Pakistani. It has even granted some returnees
the $10,000 repatriation package.

The blame must be shared. Former immigration minister Philip
Ruddock, the media and the some of the Bakhtiyaris' most strident
supporters and legal advocates all played a role in making this
family the most notorious - praised and pilloried - of all
asylum-seeker families.

Early on, the Bakhtiyari family was pushed forward by advocates
as innocent victims of a harsh and unjust immigration regime. Much
was made of Roqia failing her linguistic test, that Ali had been
granted a visa and she had not. Little attention was paid to the
fact she had changed her story on several occasions and had a
credibility problem.

But the turning point in the family's fortunes came when
protesters in 2002 helped the Bakhtiyari boys, Alamdar and
Montazar, escape from the Woomera detention centre. The teenagers
lived for weeks as fugitives, smuggled from one house to another,
to the endless distress of their parents.

When the boys walked into the British consulate to ask for
asylum - a stunt advocates organised - they became not just a
political embarrassment, but a target. It was then Mr Ruddock made
his famous statement that they were Pakistanis, not Afghans. Their
fate was settled. The Government was determined to prove its case
and it did, all the way to the High Court.

The question remains: If the activists and advocates had not
used this family as a political fodder to embarrass and discredit
the Howard Government's immigration policies, and the media had not
placed the family's claims under such intense scrutiny, scrutiny
many refugee claims would not withstand, would their situation be
any different? The answer is a qualified yes.

The Bakhtiyaris, leaving aside merits of their claims, were
caught in a bitter political and legal debate that made it
impossible for either side to seek a humane solution or even for
them to quietly go home as hundreds have.